Ban Congress From Trading Stocks
Here’s a thought exercise: It’s January 2020, and you’re a sitting senator on the Senate Health Committee. Your committee holds a private, all-member session where you’re briefed about the looming COVID crisis. That very same day, you begin selling select stocks in companies that could be impacted by the pandemic and start investing in companies that could benefit from new remote work policies. In total, you sell more than $18 million in stocks.
Sounds like a pretty wild story doesn’t it? Well it’s true — just ask former Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA).
Members of the House and the Senate have access to an enormous amount of information about our economy that isn’t available to the public—and they can far too easily turn around and use that information to make a profit.
We’ve seen terrible examples of this throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) left that same all-member briefing session and decided to sell off over a million dollars worth of stock while reassuring the public that the United States was prepared to fight COVID.
Existing ethics laws don’t go far enough to prevent our senators and representatives from using the information they receive in the course of their legislative duties for personal profit. The way to stop them from taking advantage of their office for financial gain is by stopping them from buying or selling stocks while in office.
When we elect politicians, we expect them to represent us, not their bank accounts. It’s time to hold our government officials to a higher standard.
In a few clicks, send a pre-written email to your legislators telling them to ban members of Congress from buying or selling individual stocks while they’re in office.
Then, consider chipping in to help us stop elected officials from enriching themselves at our expense.